The first week of school!!

I guess I haven't posted in more than a week, so I should probably get on it.
This week was a really busy week because school actually started in earnest on Monday. The first day of school wasn't crazy because here (in Cuenca at least, maybe in all of Ecuador) parents go with their children for the first day of school. Mainly the international team was responsible for going to each classroom and introducing ourselves, which we did. I also hung out in the preschool classroom where I'm going to be working quite a bit. All of the kids were really cute, especially this one who would not stay in the class. I ended up running after her when she went to the playground. She's two, so she doesn't speak a lot of anything, much less English. However, after a few rides down the slide and some swinging, I managed to convince her that we should go back inside and see "Mommy" (good thing the same word is used in English and Spanish). Unfortunately, she didn't come back the rest of the week, but I think that was more that her parents might have decided she was too young for preschool rather than me taking her to the playground.
Tuesday was the first real day of school, but things were still on the relaxed side. When Slocomb and I arrived at 7:25 (5 minutes after the appointed time), Liv was the only teacher there. Things didn't get started up until about 8:15 that day, but since this week was more to gauge what the kids learned last year and review stuff, it was okay to miss 45 minutes of class time. Oh well. Besides hanging out with the preschoolers and kindergarteners, I spent a good bit of time painting the "Multi-purpose" room, which I plan to use a good bit for my library sessions. The library isn't really big enough or set up well for hanging out, so I'm thinking I'll have the kids pick a book from the library and then take it to the Multi-purpose room. I'm decorating it with an underwater theme, so I painted kelp and coral all this week. Tuesday morning I also worked on an electronic catalog of the library, because the one that we had from a long time ago got lost in a change of administration in the school. Bummer. So I decided to make a new one! Just trying to be useful...
Tuesday evening I decided to get industrious in the kitchen. I made rice pudding (because I had made WAAAY too much rice when Jen and Liv came over on Saturday), vegetable soup, and empanadas. The pudding and empanadas were really good, and the soup was pretty good, but in all I spent about 3 hours cooking. It was mainly the chicken for the empanadas that took forever, but they turned out really well. I'm thinking about making some more today, but I'm going to go vegetarian so it doesn't take and hour and a half to make the filling.
Anyway, on Wednesday, all of the international team was supposed to rotate to each of the classrooms. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to all of them. I would get involved with something, or the national teacher would have to do something, so I ended up spending about 45 minutes in the preschool and kindergarten classes instead of 20 minutes in each. I also got to visit the 5th graders (Juana's class) on Wednesday. Most of them have been at CEDEI for several years, so the for the most part speak English really well. There are a few who won't speak back to you in English, but they all understand what you're saying (unlike the kindergarteners). I played scrabble with the older kids, and they loved it. I'm kinda bummed that I'm not going to have them in class at all.
Thursday was more rotation, and I once again didn't get to all the classes I meant to. I did visit the second grade (Caro's class), which is a handful. There are more special needs students in that class than the others, and its about 15 boys and 4 girls. Whoa. Caro does a good job with them, but she was very excited for the international teachers to come and take them off her hands for a while. There are a few second graders who have really good English, but for most of them its a struggle. I'm not working with them at all this year (except in one-on-one tutorials), but I'm sure that they are going to be a challenging class.
On Thursday I also visited Ale's class (fourth grade). They are very similar to Juana's class: well-behaved for the most part and very good at English. I'm going to be their library teacher, so I'll see them twice a week. I also went back to kindergarten on Thursday, and they are also a handful. There are about 20 kids in the class, and only one or two have much English at all. Also, Vero, their teacher, speaks no English, so I try to speak Spanish with her. Sometimes the message gets across, but its hard when I need to say one quick thing to her, like, "What's his name?" or "What have you done this morning?" and it take several minutes to get it across. I'll be in Vero's class about 4 hours a week, so it'll be an incentive for me to learn Spanish.
On Thursday afternoon, we went to this vegetarian restaurant, Good Affinity, which is run by the parents of two of our students. The food was really good, the students' mom was really exited to see us, it was inexpensive, and we got free dessert! We're thinking about making it a weekly thing to go to Good Affinity. We're thinking Thursday so it'll get us through the last of the week.
Friday we rotated in pairs, so Slocomb and I went together ( The international team has natural breaking points into pairs - Slocomb and Me, Jen and Liv, and Maria and Erin. I guess we should try to work on branching out, but those are the pairs that live together and know each other best.) Slocomb and I started in Vero's class because it is also a challenging class, and we were only going to stay for 15 minutes. But then one of the students got sick. On the floor. In the middle of class. So Vero had to go deal with that, and we ended up being there for about 35 minutes. We also stopped by preschool, but they were getting ready for snack, so we just distracted them until Tami got back with food. There was enough left over for us to have some, so we stood outside the class to eat. There is a big window into the class from the hallway, so Slocomb and I played silly games with the preschoolers by appearing and disappearing at random points in the window. Quite fun.
Slocomb and I also made it to Juana's class, where we played hangman, boys against girls. Slocomb is all about playing boys against girls, especially once you get to fifth grade, because they all are really competitive. We ended up switching to a sort of Wheel of Fortune game so both teams to could play together. I think I'm going to work on making a wheel for Wheel of Fortune because it could be a really great language game with the older kids.
So here's a summary of the week: hung out with kids (preschool and oldest kids are the easiest to work with), made good food, ate good food, painted decorations on a room, started cataloging the library, didn't speak enough Spanish, and went to bed about 10pm, got up about 6am every day. Except for the Spanish part, it was a really good week.
Also, we went shopping on Tuesday afternoon I think it was, and I bought a Harry Potter en español (Harry Potter y las reliquias de muerte) book. We were so inspired by this find that we also bought the movie dubbed in Spanish (all 5 harry potter movies on on DVD - $1.50). I watched Prisoner of Azkaban, but I think my Spanish needs some more work to really get everything. I would have been lost if I hadn't seen the movie before.
Also also, I got fitted for my uniform yesterday. Its not required at school, but I'm actually really excited for it. Its essentially just a track suit with comfy pants and a jacket with the CEDEI logo on it. We also will have t-shirts and a polo shirt. The whole outfit will be $40, which is kind of expensive in Ecuador terms, but not in US terms. What I've found is that food, lodging, and transportation are all really cheap, but clothes, shoes, and school supplies are pretty expensive comparatively. Anyway, I'll put up pictures of the uniforms once we get them.
Last thing: Mark (the director of the CEDEI foundation) has invited us all (like all of the CEDEI employees... its gonna be nuts) over tomorrow. He has NFL gameday, and so we're gonna go watch the Redskins game (Mark's from New Jersey so a Redskins fan). I'm a little bit nervous that Slocomb and Mark (and maybe me... I do kinda miss watching football) are going to be the only ones watching and that everyone else is going to be wondering about us. Whatever, it'll be fun nonetheless! I'll take pictures and update tomorrow...